Chapter 1
The decision to leave came suddenly and without great warning or planning. If anything it was more of an afterthought as he stood in a convenience store near the corner of Sepulveda and El Segundo boulevards.
“Just leave,” he’d almost murmured to himself. “No ifs, ans, buts or goodbyes- just leave.”
And, with that, he began collecting a few items he’d need, a few cases of bottled water, an extra gas can, munchies and lots of beer. He’d almost made it through checkout before the cashier, a young stoner named Stan, did a double take.
“Hey man, aren’t you like that guy?” he stammered.
This happened too often, more often than Keith cared to admit. He tried to play dumb, but a slight grin crept across his face.
“What guy?” he asked coyly.
“You know, the guy from Gateway,” Stan exclaimed. “Keith. Keith Vincent.”
“Not any more,” Keith said. “I used to be, but I’m someone else now.”
Stan looked at him, confused at first and then also grinning.
“Oh I get it now,” Stan said. “You’re incognition.”
Keith laughed despite himself, at the kid’s mispronunciation.
“You’re going under ground,” the kid continued. “I can dig that. I don’t blame you man. It’s just like you said at the MTV music awards man, fuck this shit. I wish I could do that. Just say fuck it and disappear. A lot of your fans dig what you did man. Fuck the music industry. You hit the nail on the head.”
Suddenly, Keith had had enough.
“Look man, you really don’t know what the fuck you’re rambling on about, so just drop it,” he said.
Shot down, Stan shut up.
“That’s cool, but you don’t have to be a dick about it man,” Stan said. “You owe me $48.76.”
Keith slid the guy a hundred dollar bill and walked away carrying his supplies.
Now, a day later at the southeastern tip of the California Arizona border, Keith Vincent had another decision to make – would he continue south into Mexico or head east, into the desert, into Arizona.
The kilo of cocaine and half pound of pot he was carrying made that a no-brainer. He wasn’t about to try to cross the border with the drugs. At one of the last border towns he came to before the junction, he gassed the van up, marveling at the purple-pink sunset.
How long had it been since he’d just taken a time out to marvel at a sunset? He couldn’t remember. And this conclusion nearly brought him to tears. He hung the gas nozzle back up, paid and then lit a joint as he pulled out of the small gas station.
He drove slow, deeply inhaling the marijuana smoke, still staring at the sunset. It had to be the most magnificent sunset he had ever seen. Finally as the sun sank over the western horizon, only a small burning dot of red now, he turned onto U.S. 98, heading away from the ending day.
When Keith initially began his journey, he thought boredom was going to be a problem. Of course, the blow and pot would help ease the time, but at the core of it all it was companionship he knew he wanted. That was why, the night before, he’d suggested to Sully that the two of them go to Vegas together. However, an hour or two later, when Sully was so loaded he couldn’t speak, Keith knew that wasn’t the sort of companionship he needed.
In fact it was companionship, the primal urge to understand people and to be understood by others, which prompted him to get in his van and start driving. There was no understanding, either way, in the world that he was leaving behind - only pain and misery.
As he drove through the desert night, the idea of boredom arose again, but only as a passing afterthought. His old cheap tape deck had kept him company through most of his voyage down the southern tip of California. But was he headed east on U.S. 98 his head was filled with a different type of music and a different type of freedom.
Shortly after he gassed up and started out on U.S. 98, his cell phone began ringing incessantly. It meant that people back there had realized his absence. It would still be a day or two, he figured, until they realized he had no intention whatsoever of returning. In a final and ceremonial act of departure, Keith muted the ringer on his phone and then heaved it out into the desert, laughing as he did so.
Now he was truly free and he cheered, laughed and reveled in it. There were no rest areas or exits on the highway, but by the same token there were no other cars either. If he wanted to take a piss, he pulled over, got out the van and pissed on the side of the road. If he had to take a dump, he did the same thing. If he wanted to roll a joint or snort a big fat rail, he just pulled over and did so.
There was nothing – no life, no cars, no law – absolutely nothing that could stop him. He was beyond all that now. And the idea that eventually the road would end or return him to civilization of some sort filled him with great sadness.
At around midnight, he got sleepy and decided to pull over for a nap. Surely, he had enough cocaine with him to keep driving for days. However, this departure was also about rest and rejuvenation. He’d been driving for miles but had seen no sign of an exit anywhere. He had some concerns over a stray cop pulling over to check him out. They wouldn’t be too thrilled to find the coke or pot. However, he was still in America. He could deal with American laws and police. It was the idea of facing a Mexican firing squad that bothered him slightly.
On this dark and deserted highway, it halfway seemed like it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he could drift off, make an absent-minded left turn and, somehow, end up in Mexico. This would not be good. No - far from it. His mind wandered even further and he imagined Mexican police, or military guys (if there was really any difference) tearing his van apart as they trained black market M-16’s and AK-47’s and Uzi’s on him.
However, just as quickly as he conjured those images in his mind, he dismissed them, halfway murmuring to himself, “Just don’t stray from this road dude and everything will be all right.”
Somehow, for some reason, this thought made everything all right. He was incognition. For whatever reasons, he was on this road. It could mean heaven or it could mean hell; but the important thing was that he was on it. Nothing else mattered now.
When he saw the “Rest Area 1 Mile” sign it was close to two in the morning – according to the watch Tara had given him at lunch on the day she broke the news to him that she’d gone to the county courthouse on Wilshire and filed the divorce papers. He never wore the damned thing, a fact, he figured, she knew in advance before buying it for him.
“I bought it for you for your birthday, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle,” she said, ashamed and sheepishly, as if somehow, this offense was worse than going down to the courthouse and filing for divorce.
“Thanks,” he’d answered, playing along just for the sheer sake of playing along.
From that point, after that lunch, the watch was stripped from its box and tossed into the built-in plastic console of his van where it sat, collecting dust, ash and gunk from spilled soft drinks and beers.
In a way, he knew, the damned watch was like a symbol of their whole doomed relationship. Tara had a thing about being on time. Keith, on the other hand, had a severe problem with tardiness.
“It’s genetic, I assure you,” he used to tell her. “It’s something I can’t control. It’s hard-wired into my system.”
It had been funny then, but not so much now, with afterthought. Tardiness, although a contributing factor, wasn’t the reason Tara divorced him. However, time was. As he gently nudged the accelerator of the van, while dipping his forefinger into the coffee can nestled between his legs, with the cocaine in it, he could literally count the number of sentences she’d used during their relationship (the total count: in-fucking-finity) with the word “time” in it.
“There’s not enough time in the day.”
“I need more me time”
“I need more us time”
To which he often wondered, and maybe verbalized a time or two, much to her chagrin, “Make up your mind, do you want us time or you time?”
Of course, much to Tara’s chagrin, Keith had his own favorite time sentences too.
“Time, time, time is on my side,” compliments of the Stones. “Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future,” compliments of the Steve Miller Band. And, his all-time favorite, compliments of Star Trek no less, “time is the fire in which we burn.”
The more he thought about it though, the more it began to bum him out. It wasn’t so much the memories of Tara, though, that bummed him out, as it was the concept of time itself, and it’s many constraints. He wanted to be free of that.
So after he pulled into the rest area to go use the bathroom, when he ran into a lone night guard guarding what (a row of ancient vending machines, he asked the guy, “You want to buy a watch man?”
The guard looked at him almost as if he were a leper, then nodded slightly, unsure and asked, “What you got?”
There was something in the guard’s body language that pricked at Keith’s psyche, though that forced him to re-evaluate the entire situation.
“Did I say buy?” Keith said aloud. “My mistake, my man. Here’s the deal. I want to pay you to take this watch.”
Keith held the watch out for the guard to examine.
“What’s wrong with it?” the guard asked.
“Nothing, it works fine,” Keith said. “It’s nothing fancy. It’s not a Rolex or anything, but it’s been a good watch.”
“And you want to pay me to take it,” the guard asked, still skeptical. “Is it stolen?”
“No,” Keith said. “It was a gift. It was a gift actually. It was given to me by a lady.”
The guard finally nodded and muttered, “Oh, I think I get it now. She done you wrong.”
Keith reflected on this for a moment and then shook his head no.
“No, not really,” Keith said. “If anything, we did each other wrong. But that’s not why I want to get rid of it.”
“Well, why do you?” the guard asked.
Keith almost couldn’t believe this, and he almost had to resist the urge to scream, “Do you want the fucking watch or what?” But the sensation passed quickly and was replaced, instead, by an intense calm.
“I’m don’t need time where I’m going,” Keith finally said thoughtfully.
“You ain’t going to go out and do something stupid are you?” the guard asked. “You’re not gonna go blow your brains out in the men’s room.”
“No, nothing like that,” Keith said.
“Good, because I’m the janitor here too,” the guard said. “And I sure as shit don’t feel like cleaning up brains tonight.”
With that, Keith handed the guard the watch and a five hundred dollar bill.
The guard looked at the bill incredulously and asked, “You sure this is right mister?”
“Yeah,” said Keith as he turned to walk away, back to the van.
“Hey mister, don’t you have to use the bathroom?” the guard asked.
“Nah, it was just a fart,” Keith said.
He climbed into the van and accelerated gently back out onto the dark and empty highway.
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